


Go back

by Welsper



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-30 23:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20455526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welsper/pseuds/Welsper
Summary: There was another gate. One they cannot close.Not in this time.





	Go back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snacky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snacky/gifts).

“It was Hopper! I saw him!”

El was frantic was she burst into the room, shaking Jonathan by the shoulders. Behind him, a glass exploded. Steve flinched at the sound and nearly dropped his drink.

“I know it was him! He’s still alive!”

“We have to go get him!” El screeched and the panic in her voice was rising. One after the other, glasses were bursting, frames were falling from the wall, until Jonathan pulled her into a hug to calm her panic. His eyes were darting nervously from her to the wall and to them. That was probably not how he had expected his meet-up to go either. The Byers had left town that summer, but they hadn’t left the hearts of their friends. It hadn’t been long until they searched each other out again and now the Byers children were visiting for the winter break. El and Will were staying at the Wheeler’s place, while Jonathan was sleeping at Steve’s.

The kids were playing a campaign together, while Nancy, Robin, Steve and Jonathan had a beer and talked about doing adult things. Nancy and Jonathan really were better at it than Robin and Steve. They were going to university and all.

“Calm down, El… get him from where?” Jonathan asked and stroked El’s hair but that was barely helping. Tears were streaming down her face as she tried to find the words.

“Far… far away!”

El furrowed her brows, clearly frustrated. If she had seen him in a dream or in that wandering space she did, then she wouldn’t clearly know where.

“_Kamchatka,” __she then whispered and Robin shot up. “__There was a sign. It said Kamchatka.”_

_“That’s in the Soviet Union,” she said. She had been studying more Russian lately and even Steve joined her in somewhen. He could order a mean serving of fries, should he ever go there. Did they have fries in Russia? Didn’t seem all that in the spirit of Communism. Maybe if they shared the fries? _

“El, there is a limit… we can’t go to Russia,” Jonathan said and laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. He was a good brother, he had always been. And he loved El just as much as he did Will. There was so much love in his heart. And Steve found himself stupidly wishing that some of it was for him. But maybe that was too much. He already had Nancy after all. Someone with drive and passion, who was going to make something out of her life. Steve sold tickets to snot-nosed kids to win plastic crap.

“But we can go somewhere else… they could never get him in the first place,” Robin spoke up.

“And how would we do that?” Nancy was up, by Jonathan’s side, flanking EL protectively as if that would shield her from her own powers and the heartbreak those brought her.

She looked beautiful as ever, in her flowing dress and Steve could beat himself on the daily for ever being such a douchebag to Nancy and Jonathan. Maybe it would have worked out better if he _been_ better before.

“Tell me you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” Steve pleaded and ran a hand through his hair. That had just been a movie! She wasn’t seriously thinking… They had been high, but _that_ high?

“No, Steve, I am not suggesting we build a time machine out of a Delorean,” Robin said and rolled her eyes, as if she had read his thoughts.

Whatever she wanted to say next was interrupted by Dustin bursting into the room.

“Guys! Guys. You have to see this! Turn on the TV!” He shouted and was already over by the TV and switched it on. The channels were all showing the same thing, the same horrible thing.

“We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you these shocking images from the Soviet Union.”

And there it was and Steve felt like the ground was ripped from under him. They had beaten it. Hopper had died for it. Billy had died for it. Half the goddamn town had died for it, being trapped inside that flesh prison. Steve still saw it sometimes in his nightmares, coming to get his friends and him and killing them all.

The report showed the Mind Flayer. And god, for a moment Steve wished it _was _the one they destroyed in Starcourt Mall. They were shown images and recordings of a border town in Russia, or what was left of it. What the Mind Flayer didn’t destroy. They the film was grainy and the photos blurry, but Steve knew it. They all knew it. 

“It’s going to get worse,” Will said, rubbing over his neck where every hair stood on end.

“It knows everybody knows now. I really doubt the Russians showed us this on purpose… someone leaked it. Someone wanted the world to see it. And now it will come for all of us, because what does it have left to lose?”

His eyes were wide and Jonathan pulled him to his side to, cradling El and Will against his side as if he could protect them from it.

“We’re going to die,” Will whispered.

“We’re not!” El shouted and stomped her foot. “We are not! Nobody else will die! And I won’t let it have Hopper!”

“What could we do?!” Mike was pacing around the room, frantic, until Robin sat him down on the couch forcefully, her hands on his shoulders. 

“Nothing. We can do nothing,” she said, with a certainty and a finality in her voice that turned the room quiet and sombre. Steve knew she was right. It was in Russia. Even if they could get there, they couldn’t fight a Mind Flayer that was absorbing the entire Soviet Union. There was finally a limit to how much of a centre to the gate’s activity there was in Hawkins.

“Here. We can do nothing _here and now_”, Robin repeated and Steve cursed quietly. 

“El… they made you open these gates, didn’t they?”

El nodded mutely.

“To this other dimension. But if you can open them in… space? Maybe you can open one in time too,” Robin continued and Mike shook his head furiously.

“She doesn’t even have her powers any more! She can’t do it!”

A pillow landed in Mike’s face. El had thrown it, but not with her hands.

“I can do it.”

“You nearly died the last time fighting the Mind Flayer!”

“I can do it,” El said, louder. There was that look in her face, with a hardness and a determination a girl her age shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t be her. It shouldn’t have to be her all the time. But Steve knew she would do it, with or without their help.

“What if we make it worse?”

“How could it be _worse_?”

“You know... butterfly effect and all? The flap of the wings of one butterfly unleashes a storm on the other side of the world? What if by trying to fix things here, we unleash hell somewhere else? We unleash hell on someone who doesn’t have an El to defend them?”

“Nance, all the butterflies are flapping their wings at warp speed already, the storm is already here and everywhere else! Do you think the Mindflayer will just stay there, in Russia? The other side of the world isn’t safe if we simply do nothing! It won’t be stopped by the border, it will be stopped by nothing but us using the gate against itself and making sure it stays closed forever this time!”

Steve was afraid, he was, but here with these children he loved so much and with Robin, Jonathan and Nancy, he knew he would do whatever it took to keep them safe.

“Alright, cool. So we time travel!” Dustin said with a shrug. “But where to? And how?”

“We go back to the Battle of Starcourt Mall,” Jonathan spoke up. “We go back and we don’t blow up the gate.”

Steve like he was going to retch Will sounded very like it when Jonathan continued: “We go through. We can’t reach Russia from here, but maybe...”

“I can close them from the inside. The other gates.”

“And we leave through the one in Hawkins and then we blow it up!” Dustin finished that thought and there was this huge grin on his face. Steve loved seeing it, loved seeing him happy. God knew that boy deserved better than this, but he also knew he wasn’t going to talk him out of it. Steve fought for the ones he loved, and so did Dustin. Who was he going to sing duets with, after all? If the Russian Army could not take care of this Mind Flayer. If there were_ more_.

“I’ll go,” Steve said right away and Nancy, Robin and Jonathan followed right after.

“We all go,” and there was no one in this room who could have been held back from it.

They built the biggest sensory deprivation tank their meagre salaries could buy, all so El could do the impossible – or perhaps, the impossible for anyone but her.

“Is it worki- ow!” Lucas rubbed his shoulder where Max had hit him and then shushed him.

“She needs to concentrate,” she whispered.

“How are we even going to notice -”

And then suddenly everything in Steve’s body hurt. His eye was swollen shut, his neck was tingling from the shot he was given earlier. Earlier? That had been months ago. And then it hit Steve. They had travelled back in time, but nothing like in the movies. Whatever they had been in the future, it was them now in the past. With all their new memories and the knowledge of what they had to do.

He saw Billy down there, leaning over El and he knew what she was telling him.

“Dustin, tell them to abort!” He screamed over the walkie-talkie. God, he prayed Dusting was the Dustin from the future, even in the past. “Do not blow it! Anyway how, convince them!”

“El! We gotta go! Hurry!”

And she was bleeding out of her nose and her ears, but she got up. Billy helped her up.

“Billy,” El told him.

“Can you hold him off?”

And Billy stared down at her, stared at Max and nodded. They had done the impossible and Billy would too, because they all had too, the world depended on it and if they failed now, the past was done for and so was the future. It wouldn’t even need the gate in Russia, however they had opened it. They wouldn’t have fixed the future here, they would have just ruined it earlier.

“Fucking go, Harrington! Do whatever you have to go!” Billy screamed and shoved El towards him. Steve grabbed her by the hand and they were running, with Robin and Nancy.

“Come back to me!” He heard Jonathan shout and for a moment, Steve felt as if that wasn’t just for Nancy. “Both of you!”

Steve leaned back in the car Robin was driving like a madwoman and pulled Nancy forward by the neck. He leaned his forehead against hers.

“It will be alright. El can do it,” he said.

“I can. I will fix it all. I won’t let Hopper die,” El said.

“_What are you guys doing?! We can’t hold them off much longer!”_

“You have to! You have to, Hopper!”

“Dad, please,” El pleaded and then more quietly, “mom, please. Please wait for me.”

The radio was silent for a moment.

“_Okay. We will do it, El. I trust you.”_

The tires were screeching when Robin came to a halt. The firing paused for a moment before it took back up again. Directed at them. El shouted and stopped the bullets in mid-air. Steve feard for her. The last battle at Starcourt Mall before their reset had cost her her powers. What if this time, it would cost her her life? But this was the only choice they had and a choice El had decided on. All they could do was support her.

“Go, go!” Hopper shouted as he knocked out a solider that was coming at them.

Steve felt a hand on his shoulder for a moment and Hopper looked down on him.

“Bring her back to me,” he said and Steve nodded. “And you have to still be here so she can come back to you.”

“Enough with the final talks, just go!” Robin screamed at them and Nancy and Steve threw themselves into the portals, flanking El.

“It’s okay, El,” Nancy whispered to her when they were through and the girl looked like she was panicking. She had spent so much time here and worse. But finally being back… maybe back for good, it must be awful. Who knew if she could even managed to close all but this one gate? Maybe they would be trapped here forever. But at least she wouldn’t be alone.

“We’re here with you,” Steve said and El managed a smile at them.

And then it came for them.

It was huge, bigger than the one in the Mall, bigger than the one in the Russian pictures. This would be what the world would be dealing with, if they didn’t stop it now.

And El would do it. Steve knew he would. There she was, standing tall between them and the Mind Flayer, even if she was only a little girl.

“You will not take them! Any of them! You will die here, alone!” El was screaming and somehow the voice of this tiny girl was louder than then Mind Flayer, louder than this screeching and roaring and the demonic wailing that seemed to come from all around them.

“And I will never. NEVER. LET. YOU. BACK.”

A surge of power knocked them all on their asses when El used her powers to force all other gates and gaps and even the tiniest cracks closed. There was nowhere left for the Mind Flayer to go. Nowhere but this avatar that was rampaging upstairs in the court and Steve prayed that the kids were alright. That by fixing this, they hadn’t sacrificed more of what was really important.

“Come on, let’s go!” Steve shouted and they were running towards the final remaining gate, held open by mad science and Bald Eagle fighting for their lives.

Behind him, he heard Nancy fall.

“Just go!” She screamed but Steve would not. He pushed El towards the gate and she understood. They needed her, on the other side.

“I won’t leave you!” Steve screamed and he scooped up Nancy in his arms, her and her broken leg.

“He’s going to kill me if I do! Hell, I am going to kill myself!”

“Why, you...”

“You two need to be happy! And live together! Maybe have smart little kids together! You deserve this!” Steve rambled as he was running.

“Yeah well, if we get out of here, you’re going to have to join, and maybe stop being miserable all the time!” Nancy shouted and Steve laughed, laughed with no breath as he was sprinting towards the gate and flung himself through it along with Nancy. His hair stood on end from the electricity and power in the air and he nodded at El.

“If we stand here when the gate blows, we’re going to die!” Hopper shouted and there was a desperation and fear in his eyes that Steve wondered if his own father would ever show him. Maybe his own father would just let Steve die here. He wasn’t much of a son anyway. But Hopper never would. He had a love for his daughter that nothing in the world could rival.

“I can hold it back!” El shouted, and raised her hands. “You have to trust me, dad!”

Hopper thought about it only a moment.

“NOW, Joyce!”

And the world exploded around them.

When Steve came to, someone was shouting at them. Shining a light in this eyes.

“Huh? What?” He asked, groggily. His own voice sound foreign to him, tired and tiny and quiet. And even then he could only hear it somewhat, like something was plugging his ears.

“You did it,” Jonathan said and Steve felt him run his fingers through his hair. He might have complained if it was anyone else – did he know how much time and hairspray it took to get this right? But it was Jonathan and Steve would have let him do anything he wanted to his hair.

“We all did,” Nancy said next to him and finally Steve saw they were in an ambulance, wrapped up, but in one piece.

“No more gates. Anywhere. The Mind Flayer’s trapped in there now.”

“Good,” Steve said. “Fuck him.”

“Are you...” Nancy looked for something in his eyes, as he did in theirs and they all breathed a sigh of relief as they found it. Changing the past hadn’t changed them. They were the same people. They remembered each other, they remembered their adventures, the way they had been before and the way they had changed them. This was their new future now. And the horrible thing that had happened in the old future, dreading to take over the world, it was never going to happen.

And they remembered what they had become for each other.

“I wouldn’t forget you for anything in the world,” Steve said and Nancy and Jonathan laughed with him. They pulled him forward into their embrace and with those two in his arms, Steve thought the world might finally be alright.


End file.
